5.4 Enchanting Change

Alright, first I’m gonna show it to you here in case you haven’t seen the patch notes for 5.4 (full link here).

So this is going to blow the doors wide open on enchanting your gear, allowing any enchant to be cast on any item so long as it’s the appropriate type of item (you can’t enchant your chest with a weapon enchant and such, but all weapon enchants are available to all weapons unless there’s a two-handed requirement etc).

Since heirlooms are something that I place a high amount of focus on, even when I’m not actively playing the game like right now, this is a big deal that I do want to be able to cover everyone. That being said, until we’re able to do some testing on these changes it’s not going to be clear which enchants are the best for which items. So up until 5.4 goes live, consider my current Guide to Heirlooms to be correct on all fronts, but once 5.4 is out don’t believe the old guide in terms of enchanting until I’ve updated it with the results of testing.

 

Warlock Leveling: 1-30 Affliction

I’ve done a lot of playing around on low level Warlocks over the last couple of months, and it’s been hard to find one that really felt right in all the ways that low level alts need to in order for me to keep playing them rather than simply deleting them before I really have a chance to see what they have to offer. Having played a Warlock off and on over the last couple of expansions, I was surprised by how much things felt…off at low levels across the different specs. We’ll get into that a bit later on in the article. I did eventually find a spec that really felt right to me, and we’ll discus that as well.

For now, let’s take a look at the Affliction Warlock, what makes them (and their DoT’s) tick, and how you can become a successful soul-sucking, DoT’chucking overlord of death.

 

2012 in review

I’m not usually big on letting my blog post things for me, but what the heck. Figured I might as well share this with you.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 690,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 13 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!

Click here to see the complete report.

 

New Heirlooms in 5.2?

The PTR has once again revealed the possibility of new heirlooms. For the last couple of years there have been heirloom rings that were datamined out of the PTR, but we still haven’t seen them in-game. The legs showed up at the same time as the rings, and we have had those for a while now but who knows whether these new items will really be available or not, and if so then when?

When and if these new heirlooms do become available, I will update my existing guide, or write a new one to make sure that all of your heirloom needs are covered from which ones you need or want for which class, to which enchants you’ll want to put on them as well. Until they are confirmed to be in the actual patch, I’ll just stick with this guide to give you an idea of what’s there.

This post will show you all of the new heirlooms that were found in the 5.2 patch, and compare them to their existing items so that you can see how they compare and whether or not they might be on your list of things to do once they go live.

[Update: I found a blue post yesterday that confirms that these new upgraded heirlooms will in fact be in the 5.2 patch, as well as the new shields and off-hand item. The price for the upgraded versions of the heirlooms is the same as the current version of the heirloom plus you have to turn in that old heirloom. So, if you want a level 85 heirloom, they basically cost twice as much as the original because you have to turn in a copy of the original in order to get it.]

 

Death Knight Leveling: 55-75 Frost DPS

I’d like to tell you that leveling up as a Frost Death Knight is a hard thing to do, but then I would be lying. You see, Frost Death Knights have this thing called a God Complex where they think they can kill whoever they want to without harm or repercussion to themselves, all the loot belongs to them, their DPS is through the roof putting everyone else to shame, and so on. The bad news is, occasionally that will come back to bite you in the butt and score you a trip to the spirit healer. The good news is, that whole God Complex thing started because the majority of it is actually true.

Enough with the intro, let’s take a look at how to go about leveling and playing a Frost Death Knight.